Waters's World

John Waters, the renegade director of such gross-out classics as Pink Flamingos and Mondo Trasho, has his say in an episode of the Sundance Channel's Conversations in World Cinema series airing tonight at 8:30 pm/ET and Saturday at 4:30 pm/ET. But before then, one of his favorite leading ladies — sorry, not the late Divine — wants to speak her peace about the outrageous auteur.

"[The atmosphere on John's sets] was like reform school," Cry-Baby and Serial Mom veteran Traci Elizabeth Lords tells TV Guide Online, laughing. "I adore John. He definitely sees the world off to the left... or off to the right... or just off."

All kidding aside, the former blue-movie starlet holds in the highest esteem the colorful character who gave her her big break in legitimate pictures. "I respect John so much," she says. "He grew up wanting to be a filmmaker so badly that he went out and got a little eight-millimeter camera and started making movies in back alleys. He did it because he had to — it was in his blood, and it seeped out.

"And he won, ultimately," she adds, "because he took his dream and made it something. He created this whole sort of legacy with it."

Much in the way that Waters's ascent inspired Lords, it also could — or, at least, should — spur on others, she believes. "It's the ultimate story of the little boy from the small town who had a dream and made it."